Travis County Commssioners Court
April 27, 2004
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Item 6
6. Consider and take appropriate action on the schematic design for the remodel of the Travis County courthouse and impact on related facilities. This will be a lot more positive, roger.
>> okay. Back in November/december we presented to you all a program about -- a program that shows the area where everybody would go in the courthouse level 1, 2, 3. And today if we have completed our schematic design, we met with all of the users, all of the users are on board with us about the schematic design and we would like to have your approval of the schematic design so we can move forward with it. The construction --
>> this is also the scenario that comes from -- came from the [indiscernible] committee.
>> that's right.
>> and we would like to -- we would like to present the schematic design to you all and get the -- to get the approval from you all so we can move on with the design. The schedule is going to be constructed in phases, not going to be one project. Everything is going to go down about the same time. So it's going to be again the cafeteria and the -- and [indiscernible] an area, then also the constable area, this is the first floor, also the district clerk on the first floor, then the second floor we would have the county clerk, expanding their spaces and also for judge nirano and judge herman. And on the third floor going to be the -- [indiscernible] judge and also some administrative offices for the -- for the demonstration. I have put in here [indiscernible] he's going to run this schematic with you.
>> this schematic design represents the -- essentially what we brought to you back when we were doing the fy '04 budget. We have been able to come one a design for moving the cafeteria to the adjacent space to the south. We are going to create in the old cafeteria space a customer service center that will be run by the records management department. It will include a couple of computer terminals that will allow public access for -- for law library online services. This is predicated on the idea that the law library, which is presently on the fourth floor behind judge jenkins courtroom will move over here to the granger building on the first floor and be consolidated with the law library that's presently here. In the area that's currently occupied by the county clerk's records management division, which will move upstairs and consolidate the entire county clerk's facility on the second floor, we are -- we intend to move judge hurley's family law court room from the fifth floor space to occupy this area. We are going to install a -- a handicapped restroom, a holding room for prisoners that frequently go there and expand her courtroom slightly and provide public waiting so that we can get -- so we can get the public crowds out of the -- out of the public lobbies. The area that's currently occupied by district 5, we are going to move the files down to this area, we have created a public access room across the hall, which will allow the public who is accessing the district clerk's files to stay away from the stack that's the files are actually in, which will significantly improve the security of the files so that staff will bring -- staff will pull files, bring them across the hall, where there will be computer terminal access and tables for the public to -- to -- and attorneys to occupy. The area here when is judge herb evans, justice of the peace offices will remain up changed, small district clerk down here. That concludes the work on the first floor. We are going to maintain the information booth, dress it up a bit so it looks more appropriate and it responds better to its new name which will be coordinated also with this customer service area down here. Part of what we are planning to do is improve the docket boards, the information and the standardize signage and way findings so that we have less public confusion about locating courts and using the facilities. Quick question, I'm sorry, I didn't understand. How much square footage did the cafeteria have and how much square footage will the cafeteria have.
>> it was originally about 1365, I believe, it's going to be -- going to be about that same size.
>> so pretty much we --
>> pretty [indiscernible] sensitive issue, status quo.
>> yes.
>> but any space which actually has windows --
>> that's correct.
>> am I looking, jim, in terms of on the cafeteria piece, that's all one gigantic piece for the cafeteria, there's a section where I can't tell does it belong to records management or to the cafeteria.
>> yes, there's --
>> I couldn't tell what it was labeled. Second question is on that little interior restroom, it seems to be only accessible through a court reporter's office. Is that what was intended that who is supposed to use that brm and they are going to have to go through somebody else's personal office to get to it.
>> that's for use by the judge, by the court reporter and by the bailiff. Only --
>> not intended for the public waiting room area.
>> no, it's not.
>> intended to be the way it is.
>> its primary function was to allow court staff to be separated from the public at all times. So they are not having to go to the main public restroom, mingle with the people that they are in court dealing with.
>> I guess the one thing that I'm not seeing on any of these floors which will work through as we go, the perfunctory signatures of people who are impacted to say we agree and we sign-off, which apparently is a really big deal issue for us these days, I see judge dietz here. But at some point you know in terms of somebody lawyer-like nodding off related to -- to the law library issue, we talked about all of these things, but you know signatures and nodding and putting things into the public record are -- are helpful as we -- --
>> I did fail to get snib's signature -- anybody's signature but I did get their word that they are on board with it.
>> all right. Sorry. I believe we have been able to demonstrate that we can get a total of 87 staff comfortably on the second floor with the county clerk's operation. And that would -- that would be what we think is going to be a maximum staff increase with -- with the implementation of facts and so -- the four other programs that -- that you all will be considered here in the near future. So we have planned to allow for -- for growth in those areas. We also believe that in addition to that, there is some -- some expansion space that we could occupy by moving into part of the area that we have assigned for the records management division, which is just about doubled in size and they need it considerably more space for staging and handling of records, which they do not presently have on the first floor. With constructing a wall over here at judge herman's, judge herman's area, which will expand his offices slightly, it will allow us to move judge whitman from across the hall, and consolidate with judge herman's offices. We will then remodel the space that judge witman is present in, into a jury room and staff offices for judge nariano's county court at law two. And that concludes our work on the second floor. We are going to consolidate the northwest quadruplets drant, judge coughington's courtroom is over here, it will remain unchanged. The area that we have been able to move out of after we relocated the files down to the first floor, we are going to construct a new district courtroom and some staff office space for -- spoke for support of all of that. On the fourth and fifth floor, the space that was occupied by the public law library, we intend to make public waiting and staff offices on that space, the idea that we can get public crowds and noise and some separation between parties involving court cases into -- out of the public corridors, decrease the noise, decrease the crowding, for judge muir's courtroom and also court -- I think courtroom a. On the fifth floor the intention was to do a similar operation that will fwain by moving judge hurley down to the first floor, we will convert that space to both public and child waiting and also some staff office space so that we can decrease the noise and crowding for district courts on the fifth floor. That's the scope of our work in the courthouse at this point.
>> back on the third floor, looking for judge dietz to kind of nod his head. One of the things that came up was there was kind of a lot of weird dead space there in the hallway that's leads into judge dietz's courtroom area. It seems like we have recaptured some of that that makes sense in terms of stuff that was just hallways to nowhere. We have recaptured some space.
>> I think that's correct, Commissioner.
>> one of the things that we talked about in terms of the new district courtroom, whether there was any possible way to kind of get away to have overflow that seems to occur on our ceremonial occasions in judge dietz's courtroom, whether there was any way to utilitylize or get clever and creative with doors, et cetera, about overflow into the next courtroom. Is that possible or just didn't work out that way?
>> we can certainly do that. I know it doesn't show doors, but we can do it.
>> the doors could be opened up, stay closed most of the time, but on the ceremonial days you can open up, we have overflow into the next courtroom, relat to the ceremonial use of judge dietz's space.
>> that can certainly be done.
>> three questions come to mind. The first is how much did we budget for this?
>> we budgeted 9 -- almost $909,000. For the three floors, first, second, third floor.
>> that's in the budget now?
>> yes, sir. That's in the budget now. What are the costs now do you believe.
>> I believe it will be in that budget, it will cost about 909,000.
>> do we know whether these changes need to be approved by the historical commission.
>> I had an extensive meeting with sharon [indiscernible] of the historical commission. We discussed the philosophy of it. She's on board with how we intend to utilize these spaces, we will be presenting this plan to her once the Commissioners court approves this, we will be submitting documents for their approval.
>> I would think they would have to approve the --
>> they need to be aware of them, I believe they do need to approve them. Them.
>> the significant aspect of this is that one of the main priorities that I use understand designing this was -- that I use understand designing this with a -- that I used in designing this was to do no harm to the fabric of the building. The walls were installed after the original walls were put up. The newer walls, the wall that we are putting holes through, we are being very careful to either put them through where there were existing doors or windows previously install understand the building, we opening those, reinstalled. We are being very carefully not to damage any of the decorative art ral elements -- architectal elements. We are being very careful with the historic fabric when the intention that when we get around at some points in future years of doing a preservation project on this building that we have done no harm to it. Beyond what's already happening. It's -- it's 80 -- in its 80 years of exist tens. Existence.
>> structurally some of the things that we are doing, roger, if you do address, of the significance of moving the law library off of an upper floor, the significance of getting a lot of amalia's files off of the third floor and putting them elsewhere. Could you address about that?
>> yes. From a structural perspective this building was not designed, even though it has redundant [indiscernible] in there that can hold the load, I don't think that the structure was designed to have that many load you know on the third floor and I believe the first floor it's okay, but the third floor is a construction. We did a long time construction analysis on that, really it's kind of like we are -- we can't add any more loading on the third floor, this [indiscernible] first floor works very well. Also for the law library will help a lot to move those big books, we call them a [indiscernible] load all the way to the first floor. This is one of our objectives for moving fromthe third to the first, law library to the first floor.
>> yes, sir.
>> maybe you can't ask for this, I see stephen is in the room, in the first floor where we are going to have the public hearing or records management -- where records management is going to take that on, does that necessitate any additional folks or are you basically seeing your folks that are -- have already in another part of the building just doing their function there or do you think that -- that if it's visible, then all of a sudden, guess what, you need more help?
>> Commissioner, steve [indiscernible] records management. No new staff in any of this. We have gone through all of the scenarios with the facilities and we're fine with the plan.
>> the only other question that I have is that -- obviously what we've seep with -- with -- what we have seen with reconfigurations of things. If I were to ask this front row of people sitting here to come out here and walk out what they think is 144 square feet,, you will probably have everything from 44 square feet to 640 square feet. I mean, I really want to make sure that whoever is signing off on this design, I mean, that it's more than a signature. I mean somebody needs to know that let me show you, let me walk, judge, maybe judge dietz, you know, is a good spatial person and say now this square feet right here, I'm going to walk it off, I'm going to put a tape out here. This is going to be the area that does it for you. And, I mean, if you can get to the point of pushing a table or putting a chair or putting something in and saying does this work for you? Because this thing is going to make me go crazy. If I have 16 people over here after this thing gets laid out saying oh, I didn't know -- well, no, I didn't know, I can't go in the bathroom and turn around. There's a lot going on, at least the initial three floors, let's just make sure that -- that people know what they are putting their initials next to whenever it comes to space. I -- I depend on you, the architects, the engineers, the space committee or whatever. As Commissioners, I certainly don't have the time to go out and make sure that a judge is happy with -- with their waiting jury or whatever there is out there. Let's please make sure that we do that.
>> we'll do it, Commissioner.
>> I think the one difference here is this is not a wide open space like hum how many square foot it's like judge dietz knows every square foot of this building because he's pretty much walked me through every square foot of this building. So it is easy to visualize, hi, that's the old accounting division, we see walls, we can get a sense of what exactly that is. I think, I appreciate the Commissioners court giving this input of saying go back to the users and let us validate some of the questions and concerns we had before. We worked through the sawyer cafeteria issue because there are things all over the map about whether it would happen or not. We worked through the law library issue in creating this new space on the first floor to for a certain kind of public activities, but then taking care of steven's other need related to law library, consolidation and some things that appropriately can handle -- happen here in the granger building. We had a lot of long conversations with judge dietz about what is the space you need for a courtroom and one of the real big ones was up on the fifth floor of too many courtrooms that have too many people going in and out of them because of the kinds of dockets that they run. Judge hurl lee's courtroom being one of them to kind of get one of those heavy duty courtrooms out of there and on to a floor where we could handle that traffic but to separate it in a way that's not going to conflict with what's going on in the district clerk's office, kind of getting down to the zoning of the building. I appreciate the extra time that was put into this because this is one where I think that it is a substantially improved product over what was originally presented to us before christmas. I think it's because we did say time out, go back to the users, let us walk through every single floor again to see if you might be able to get some better ideas. I think that's exactly what happened in working with the users.
>> for the average taxpayer who is wondering what's going on, can we summarize what we intend to accomplish here, why that's important?
>> our intention in doing this rearrangement here is to quite simply improve the public's usage of the courthouse. It's to make the courts more efficient by decreasing the noise and confusion, by separating hostile parties, by making consolidating some of the spaces on the lower floors where there will be a greater amount of public, which we hope will decrease the load on the elevators, the -- it's to improve way finding, it's improve customer service in terms of people being accident to easily get information about what they need to do -- being able to get information about what they need to do and where they need to go. The entire intention was to reorganize the building was essentially to have the district courts on the top to eliminate the crowding and confusion being caused by family courts and county courts which have a lot more users showing up. That was our entire intent. What really drove it was the crowding and confusion on the upper court floors. It caused us to look at these other floors, how can we reorganize and improve.
>> all of this voting, all of this stuff that we always do through the time, that's all been -- will that still stay here in dana, in the courthouse, you are happy with the layout of all of that? I mean that's obviously been taken into consideration.
>> day labor site day labor consideration --
>> dana debeauvoir, everybody that has to do with courts has remained in the courthouse. Everything else has moved to 5501 airport boulevard. So that means real property, marriage licenses, dba, elections, research.
>> I know that. But the voting period, we always have early voting --
>> oh, we will still have a little space in the hallway where we --
>> I know that you are out there --
>> absolutely, yeah.
>> that's been taken into consideration and we are fine, we don't all of a sudden find out that we have to vote on the sidewalk [laughter]
>> we may want to -- we are not going to have to do that. But we may want to decide where exactly to put it. It doesn't have to particular be in one particular corner of the corridor, it could be someplace else. The next iteration that we have to go through next is to figure out, we have existing furniture and we are going to need new pieces because what we are trying to do is make the most of the space. If you are talking about creating team units where people can work together, that takes a different configuration, so our next set of tasks is to try to see figure out -- to try to figure out what the footprint on the floor would look like so you can see what you put on the floor earlier.
>> would we also not want to put another driving force here is that we have the creation of a new civil district court coming online, we had no courtroom to put that judge in. So that is one of the other things that's being carved out is in anticipation of the governor naming whoever our judge is, that there is a courtroom for that person to go into.
>> very good point. The 419th is supposed to become operational my understanding in December of 2005. That certainly was one of the considerations. The other was to get the heavy loading of the condensed mobile file system off the third floor, get it down on to a ground floor. Our -- the analysis indicated that it was pretty much maxed out for the floor loading. And it's really kind of interesting how all of these priorities that we have have worked so well together because I hi what -- I think what we have here is something that's really going to improve the public usage of the courthouse as an interim until we get something to do much nicer with it in the future, I hope.
>> what we are trying to do really is take a 40, 50-year-old courthouse and make it more usable today.
>> when you sit and chat with the areas affected, elected and appointed officials, you all actually discuss not only the space changes, but how the space will be utilized and --
>> yes, we do.
>> how do we handle what is an issue? That is we do not have signatures, granted Gerald i'll take them in blood, but we need something that says these departments on the record are signing off, they get it related to the space that we are talking about, that's what they understand the project to be and agree.
>> hi, judge dietz.
>> i'll make it of record for the district judges and we have worked with roger and staff and -- and I -- I want to make it clear, we need more space but with respect to what's available, we think this is as good of a plan as we're going to get. If you will remember, I think that we have taken [indiscernible] with at least Commissioner Sonleitner, Commissioner Daugherty, we have two courts on the third floor, you have got four courts on the fourth floor, we had six courts on the fifth floor. And I believe that there -- that there's probably less space on the fifth floor than any of them. And part of the problem, if you'll recall, we brought a videotape, that we are running c.p.s. Dockets on, by -- well, actually we're now doing it on floors, 3, 4, 5. But it necessitated sometimes bringing prisoners through and we did not have any secure facility and what we have talked with jim is with respect to the family law court that will go on the first floor, that we can have a holding facility and we can arrange our docket so that if we do have any jail inmates, we will just run them through that first floor court without having to haul them throughout the courthouse on 3, 4 and 5. We have discussed with both jim and roger that we need additional, some additional administrative space, but I believe that's true of dana's shop or the district clerk or anybody else. There's a crying need for that. And the creation of the new court we thought we were going to get a bigger bang, but we are happy to get the new court. So that's going to take away -- that's going to take away some of it. But we have discussed it among the district judges and we are satisfied with roger and jim's efforts in this. We believe that this is the best plan that's -- that's available. Plus we have additionally had additional conversations with steve roberg and records management and I think this is a very good solution, what we've got.
>> so you are willing, judge, to sign-off -- is it the best thing, it's better than a poke in an eye with a sharp stick, but I would like to have more space, but I can do this, but in a year, I don't want to say I don't know why we spent a million because it's not any better.
>> well, I just want to make clear, I'm trying to do it in a politically sensitive way. When we were over here at the first time, we all said that this is a band-aid that covers our needs foreseeable needs for the next couple of years. There's a bigger elephant out there looming but we will discuss that a different day. I'm satisfy odd behalf of the district judges with this plan.
>> judge? I know everybody is getting ready to head out for lunch. Let me ask this question: how much of this expansion, the expense of efficiency, right now with $108,000 -- right now with $908,000, could be curtailed or reduced with the full implementation of video conferencing that's realized -- tract inmates basically from del valle to Travis County of a certain offenses -- how much of this, if we were really ready to implement, how much reduction do you feel there would be, as far as having to come from del valle to -- to a period before the court, if that could be done through video conferencing or video description or whatever you want to call it, that would -- it's been brought to my attention, there's still significant room to grow. That would kind of offset some intention from the sheriff -- some expense from the sheriff's department as far as that type of activity that takes place. I'm just really curious to hear from a judge what -- what component of reduction could be realized if any. In that particular project.
>> well, judge muir and others have done a pilot project that -- video conferencing with -- with sheriffs. Unfortunately, probably at the time we were doing it, the jail population was at the greatest that it had been and there were -- there were technical difficulties being able to get staff and space out at del valle and to fully utilize it. To be fully candid, I'm not sure we're talking in the order of a hundred thousand dollars worth of savings in the civil court. It would seem intuitive that there were more in the criminal court, but there might be some if it were fully implemented, but the magnitude of it I don't think you are talking about one percent, two percent of this project's cost. Even if it were fully implemented. It's simply because what we have we we we have children being pulled from placement, transported to the courthouse, the number of prisoners come in on contempt, child support and to a lesser extent termination cases. So compared to the number of children that we've, they are significantly greater than the number of inmates that we have transported in. So if -- were we to have a video conferencing with c.p.s., Child protective services, that probably would bear more fruit than necessarily with the jail.
>> okay. I just wanted to try to throw it all into one mix here. To look for more savings if possible. But along also with the transport of inmates from jail valley. With this video conferencing fully -- fully administered, make come up to the range as far as budget concerns. Up to about a million now. That's -- that's pretty significant to me, if that's part of all of this, just kind of looking for ways to reduce -- costs to the taxpayers. [indiscernible] doing that. I think c.p.s. Maybe something that need to be also looked at. We really need to look at cutting costs. Thank you.
>> any other questions? Thank you all.
>> thanks.
>> motion?
>> move for recess.
>> I think we need to move approval for this --
>> I second.
>> I'm sorry.
>> approval.
>> I would make it contingent upon us getting the appropriate signatures from the impacted elected officials with judge dietz being able to sign-off on behalf of the civil district court.
>> second that.
>> let me ask this. If at all possible, do you know when this is going to come back? Do we have any idea, roger?
>> well, right now schematic design, it's going to take me like three months for a final project, it's good go to down the road. Let's say by the end of July.
>> okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that --
>> okay, thanks.
>> thank you.
>> any more discussion of the motion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> [indiscernible]
>> yes.
>> thank you all.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 9:46 AM